Melila Hellner is professor of “Jewish mysticism and Zohar” at the Department of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, where she also lectures to a joint weekly study program for Rabbinic students from the different Jewish streams.

Prof. Hellner has by now belonged to the leading spirits behind the Israeli renaissance of non-orthodox/non-religious Israeli adults studying Jewish classical texts. She is a member of the faculty of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality and active in the 'Sulha' – a project of searching for peace that brings Israelis and Palestinians together.

Her book A River Issues from Eden: On the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar (Stanford University Press, 2009) is can be borrowed from the Levisson library and is now in the shops als available in a paperback edition.